My Kitchen Rules recap: Cat fight to the finish

The much-maligned WA globetrotters Chloe and Kelly have clawed their way to a grand final berth.

Finalists ... My Kitchen Rules team Chloe James and Kelly Ramsay (pictured, from left), from Western Australia, will cook off in the final against South Australian mums Bree May and Jessica Liebich.

The much-maligned WA globetrotters Chloe and Kelly have clawed their way to a grand final berth and ousted the only Y chromosomes left in the competition.

This episode, they sat back, relaxed and spewed forth venom for our viewing pleasure as the South Australians and Victorians battled it out for the remaining spot in the finale.

Will it be twins for the win? Or sweet victory for the supermums?

After the obligatory build up, Manu slipped on his Captain Obvious hat reminding the teams that they’re fighting for title of My Kitchen Rules “shampions” (champions? champignons? I don’t care, that accent is awesome).

Pete activated pep talk mode, complimenting the twins on their confidence and crediting their success to “fighting with one spirit” (or “fighting with one brain” according to Kelly.)

Bree and Jess took another moment to remind everyone that they have “given up everything to be here” and that they’ve been such perfect housewives for so long they “forgot themselves a little bit”, but are determined to win for “them”.

With an ‘I love you’ and a high five, the SA mums took their elongated vowels and three types of Asian mushrooms into the kitchen to whip together some wontons in a hot and sour broth.

Bree loves a bit hot stuff but didn’t want the chilli in the entree to “blow (the judges’) eyes out of their sockets - or something else”.

Helena was a little overzealous with their scampi ceviche entree, popping it in the citrus juice far too early, giving Chloe and Kelly plenty to click their tongues about.

“Ceviche is South American and Helena and Vikki aren’t too good with anything but Greek,” said Chloe.

After dumping the first batch of scampi and perfecting it on the second go, she got to work on the burnt butter ice cream for sweets. Burnt butter led to burnt hands, and the whole mixture was dumped in the freezer to thicken up.

On the SA side, the mums got an early start on their dessert, adding a small forest of cinnamon to their ice cream mixture.

A quick look at the clock gave Jess a minor fit. “I don’t like to work against the clock when I’m cooking,” she said, leaving viewers wondering what fantasy reality TV world she has been existing in to date.

With time ticking away, and Manu mushing them along with his commands of “faster, faster”, the teams plated up before the dishes were mysteriously whisked away to the fancy dining room for critique by fancy judges.

Chloe and Kelly were confined to what appeared to be a naughty corner to deliver such pearls of wisdom as “the salad’s got dirt on it”.

Next up was a battle of the birds, with a duck dish favoured by the mums, and deep fried quail by the twins. Bree channelled her inner Rastafarian, urging her duck fillets to “smoke it up, man” inside a bamboo steamer.

Helena had another ‘oops’ moment, pouring her somewhat thickened burnt butter ice cream mixture into the ice cream machine itself, rather than the bowl.

Cue cackles from the WA girls. “They don’t know anything, why are these people still here?” said Chloe. That would be because the show is rigged, according to social media.

Ice cream dramas continued on both sides, with Jessica’s cinnamon ice cream failing to set, earning it a time out in the freezer. Helena’s ice cream was well and truly done, so frozen that she had to call in Vikki’s big guns to remove the bucket from the machine.

“Vikki’s a strong girl, she might find a husband,” quipped Helena, to which her shocked twin replied “are you calling me fat?”

Despite her borderline creepy pleas of “come on little puppies, you know you want to”, Bree’s duck was not yet cooked, forcing a detour to the oven which had the problem solved in minutes.

The creepy pleas rubbed off on teammate Jess, who was soon urging her Asian greens to “cook for mama”.

While plating up the duck, the mums realised they had made a potentially competition-ending blunder – not enough sauce. Everybody knows sauce is like catnip for Manu, but without enough of it, TV’s favourite Frenchman was destined to have to force his way through the duck and seared scallops with a slightly dry mouth.

“Where is the sauce?” he exclaimed predictably. “Do you know how many times I have asked for the sauce?” First world problems, indeed.

Other than the sauce, the judges were loving both mains, though the delicate palates of Chloe and Kelly seemed to be suffering through quail which was “a bit over” and the Asian greens which were “nothing special”.

Offering a lacklustre cheer for Bree and Jess, and nothing at all for the twins, Chloe and Kelly sat back to watch the battle for dessert.

“We’ll knock Chloe and Kelly out in the final, they’ll get their just desserts,” said Helena.

She spoke too soon. The burnt whatever icecream still wasn’t set, so the twins needed to change tack. Grandma’s special kourabiedes biscuits were crushed up and popped in a glass with the almost-icecream.

Next, they reached into the pantry for some store-bought sponge finger biscuits (gasp!), which were dipped in ouzo-laced Greek coffee, presumably to get the judges drunk enough not to notice the beige slop in a glass.

Meantime, the SA supermums were adding herbs to the syrup for their peach and apricot tarte tatin.

“Once we turn these little tarts out, hopefully they’re as beautiful on the inside as the outside,” said Bree, referring to either the dessert or the twins.

Manu had big expectations of the tart, and he wasn’t disappointed.

“I thought my mum did the best, then I thought I did the best, then the people in front of me did the best,” he said, before asking for the recipe.

Not surprisingly, the burnt butter custard with coffee and almonds (non-activated) didn’t go down too well.

Sevens across the board gave twins Helena and Vikki a total of 42, lower than both of the final scores in the first semi final.

Bree and Jess scored a combination of eights and nines for a total of 52, the highest semi final result, though eagle-eyed viewers already knew they had it in the bag thanks to a Sunrise promo which ran two ad breaks too early.

So the twins were dismissed (they "twlost", giggled Chloe), but before leaving declared they were “SA all the way”.

The teaser for tomorrow’s big finale showed the WA besties in black, with the SA mums donned in white, suggesting we’re in for some kind of good versus evil showdown.